El Dorado
is a Game Mode which is accessed via the Forging Block and can be built once your Town Hall reaches level 7 making it the highest level requirement of any of the Military Buildings and thus an important level to rush if you wish to be able to do all of the dailies. The entire point of this game mode is to gather weapon parts which are used to upgrade your Equipment. This is done by defending an array of bases against enemy attackers. It is much like being player whose base is being attacked in Resources Raid and Lords League except you are actively defending and the attackers are enemy NPCs attacking in waves. While defending in El Dorado your Heroes function the same way as they do when defending your own base, they receive the defense buff to their ATK and HP from their Heroes Hall, their Fortitude Skill is active, and their Mercenaries do not come to their aid. Getting Started Clicking on El Dorado takes you to a screen with a group of bases connected by a path. Only the first base will be highlighted and attackable and as you can probably tell each base is unlocked by defending the base before it. Clicking on the base takes you to a screen which shows you: the stats of the stage boss, Rewards, Power Cost, and Energy Cost of defending the base. Stage Boss Each base has a group of attacking Heroes who will come out 2 or 3 at a time with their Mercenaries and assault your base. Each wave of Heroes will come out either once the prior Heroes and their Mercenaries have all been killed or a certain amount of time has passed. The final set of Heroes to come out includes the boss who has boosted stats often making them very dangerous. Power Cost Every base, except for the first three, has a progressively higher Power Cost, more clearly referred to as Power Requirement. The cumulative Equipment Power of your Heroes must be at least as high as this requirement. Equipment Power is increased by upgrading/evolving your Equipment and anything equipped to Hero Aides gives your team half the power. Energy Cost The resource which is used in El Dorado is referred to as Energy. Energy is an automatically regenerating resource which is constantly gained at a rate of 1 Energy per 6 minutes. The only use for Energy is to challenge/auto-clear bases. It costs 6 energy to do so however the boss, which is the last base on each screen costs 12. Energy can also be purchased 120 at a time at a progressively higher cost starting at 50 Jewels for the first two purchases each day and then doubling with each progressive two purchases. This price is often discounted by 40% during the 'Save 40% on Hyper Potions' Event. The Event is so named because the game used to give you Hyper potions when you bought Energy instead of giving you the Energy immediately. There is also a Trevi Fountain Blessing which doubles the amount of Energy you receive for the first thirty purchases and the effect lasts for 4 hours. The other way to get energy is by using Energy Potions each type rewards a different amount of energy. Potions are acquired from various Events, often offered for sale in the Materials Store, and a whopping total of 50 Hyper Potions are given as part of the reward for attaining 3000 fame in the Coliseum. Challenge When you click Challenge you are taken to a base with a selection of your buildings arranged in a preset formation. The buildings are all leveled the exact same as your base and if there are any defenses which you have not yet built the building will still be included as a level 1 structure. You can move the buildings around in any formation you would like with the goal of keeping your Heroes alive and Town Hall building standing. There are many obstacles which prevent you from setting up your base the same way on every map, these obstacles are not able to be moved and include: walls, trees, and bushes. The benefit of walls is that, just like for your own base, your Heroes are able to pass over them and the enemies have to destroy them to get past. The problem is, they are always level 1 and cannot be repositioned. The other obstacles block both your Heroes and the enemies and cannot be destroyed. Battle When you click start the enemy Heroes and their Mercenaries will deploy somewhere on the edge of your map 2 or 3 at a time. Each Hero always deploys in the same spot, but there is no way for you to know where that is until you start. Usually the groups of Heroes deploy in the same spot and then the next group deploys in a different spot, however there are some maps where the groups deploy on opposite sides of the map while still others deploy every Hero in basically the same area. Your Heroes will react and attack if they are in range. The aggro range is much larger than in other modes, but it is possible that your Heroes will be out of range and just stand there sleeping in their Heroes Hall until the enemies move closer. The goal is to kill all of the enemy Heroes with all your Heroes alive and your Town Hall still standing. This can be very difficult because of the unrelenting waves of enemies who attack from all different angles putting your damage dealers in peril. There are many ways to mitigate these threats and we will talk about some of them in the Strategies section. Each victory gets a Star rating depending on your condition when the battle ends. As stated winning with all of your Heroes alive and the Town Hall still standing awards 3 stars, but if one of your Heroes is dead you will lose a star and if your Town Hall is destroyed you will lose another star. If all of your buildings are destroyed the battles ends and you receive no stars and will be charged no Energy. The battle also ends when the timer runs out, with you receiving victory and the star rating depending on the above conditions. There is actually a benefit to failing to defend the base, and that is, no Energy is charged. So you are probably better off surrendering until you figure out what you need to do to get the 3-star. Map Boss The last map on each screen has a much more powerful enemy referred to as the Boss. Unlike the other Bosses these ones have names and they can be very dangerous, the final four are actually dragons. These bosses have much better stats than all the other Heroes and they frequently use very powerful skills, many of which deal significant aoe damage. Bosses offer better rewards and each one can only be challenged 3 times per day. You can buy 3 more chances for any of the bosses starting at a price of 50 Jewels. Auto Clear Any base you have attained a 3 star victory on can be instantly auto cleared to speed of the process of farming the rewards. Regular bases are also able to be auto cleared 10 times in one tap and bosses are able to be auto cleared 3 times in one tap. Rewards You are given rewards based on how many Victory Stars you achieved. A 3 Star Victory awards 3 chests which will have a random1 selection of the rewards shown. Each map rewards a different combination of 2 to 5 different Equipment Parts, often EXP Stones of varying quantities, Gold, and the bosses can give Equipment Shards. The same reward can be repeated but the quantity of items you need is so monumental, so things average out and randomness shouldn't be too detrimental. #Most appear to be completely random except for maps which give Storm, Fire, Lightning, and Light Essences which are the 5th items needed for all the stages of the Demonic Axe. Everything that came before the Axe shared the same 2 items as their fifth and the Axe was the first to break this trend. Since then the Tyrant's Brand joined the ranks and it uses a completely new set of items for it's fifth as well, however these items don't appear to have this issue. Equipment Parts Each piece of Equipment requires large quantities of parts in order to upgrade. Every weapon has 5 slots, each which requires a different type of part, with the quantities starting at 10 for the normal slots and increasing significantly with every stage of evolution to the point where the final stage requires 400 of each item, also the 5th slot always requires double the resources. Different pieces of Equipment often require some of the same parts. There are 14 different parts of each rarity and the quantities required are the same for every weapon. Originally there were only two items of each rarity which were required as the last item in every piece of equipment, however when the added the Tyrant's Brand and Demonic Axe to the game that changed, as new items were added which serve that function for these weapons. The most important purpose of El Dorado is to farm Equipment Parts. It is thereby imperative to pay attention to which parts you need for all your weapons and clearing the dungeons which give you a balance of rewards to achieve that goal without ending up with a mountain of weapon parts that you will never use. This can be very difficult and requires solid planning. EXP Stones Almost every map can reward EXP Stones of two different qualities. The beginning dungeons offer EXP Stone 1 which can be used to give a piece of Equipment 100 EXP and the final dungeons give EXP Stone 2 which gives 300 EXP. The middle dungeons offer a mix, with many offering both. EXP stones offer the only option for leveling up your equipment and thus are an essential reward in El Dorado. Gold Almost every map offers Gold as one of the rewards. The amount is very small, somewhere around 3,000 to 12,000 depending on the difficulty of the map. Equipment Shards Equipment Shards are available as rewards from map bosses. Each boss except for the last one offers Shards to 1 to 3 different pieces of Equipment. The last rewards EXP Stones 2 and 3 (1000 EXP). Shards have two uses, 50 shards of the same type can be fused into that Equipment by going into the item menu, clicking the Equip tab, and then clicking on 'Equipment Guide'. The other use for Shards is to evolve your weapons. Each evolution level of your equipment a certain level limit, generally 10 or 20 levels higher than the previous one, and you must fulfill all of the parts requirements before you can evolve. The first level of evolve does not require any shards but every level thereafter takes progressively more shards starting at 10, then 20, then 30 and stops increasing at 200 per level. Strategy Here are some ideas on how you can improve your performance in El Dorado! *Surrender: Don't be afraid to start the challenge right away, you can always surrender without it charging you any energy. Start the battle so you can get an idea where the Heroes are coming from and how to position your Heroes and Defenses to your advantage. *Aggro: It can be very frustrating to deal with the 2nd and 3rd+ waves of enemies as your ranged heroes will usually beat your tanks to them, pulling aggro and dying. Aggro works two ways, most targets will attack whatever is closest to them, but then once something attacks one of their friends they will retaliate. This means your tank has to get in and melee one of the Heroes or their Mercs in order to pull agro, while your Ranged Heroes can do so from a 5+ tile distance. Here are a few ideas on how to mitigate this issue. **Landslide can overcome this with a combination of his fortitude skill automatically teleporting him on top of the 3rd enemy and his Active Skill taunt can be used anytime someone else pulls aggro. Be careful though because in earlier bases they often only deploy 2 heroes at a time so Landslide will stand there doing nothing until the next wave comes out. **Pounder is also useful, his active skill teleports him on top of the enemies from across the map. **Carol d'Belle can summon her Snowman and Yeti on top of the enemies from a long range and both are very good tanks. **Ambrosia with level 2+ fortitude skill attacks from such an extreme range that she usually won't pull aggro. **Wolvenfiend's active skill taunts enemies every 15 seconds when he is in Human form, he is a really good tank however this may be too long of a cooldown to work very effectively. **Arctic Lord's skill can be used to aggro the enemies from across the map and pull them towards him, allowing them to be shred by your Heroes and defenses on the way. **The Berserker is able to charge in and taunt one target at a time, and lets him charge in from a distance so he can get a hit in before your ranged heroes thus grabbing all the aggro. The trouble is the range on his skill is not great so it can only overcome the race if he is just slightly behind and you need to be careful when you use it otherwise he will stand still for a few seconds doing nothing. **Great Sage's active skill can hit enemies from across the map, stunning and silencing them. His divine skill also silences them and additionally makes him invulnerable for some time making him reasonably resilient. *Healing: At a certain point powerful healing becomes almost necessary, some great options include: **Toxic Shaman's active skill is especially powerful because it provides constant healing, deals reasonable aoe damage (certainly enough to wipe out their mercenaries), and is on a low cooldown of only 10 seconds. The trick is that it doesn't hit a very large area so it can be tricky at times and it uses at least 2 rage so it can be quite the rage hog. **Abyss Demon's active skill can heal everything including your buildings for a substantial amount and he heals himself for even more. The trouble is he has no way to grab aggro, he often derps out running around chasing far away targets even though he is surrounded by enemies and thus providing no healing since his heal requires him to attack, and he can't touch flying enemies of which there are a lot. **Ambrosia's active skill can provide powerful burst aoe healing and her divine skill is a great emergency heal option. The downside is that her skill has a high rage cost and does no where near the healing of those who do constant healing. **Enchantress and Renee Ven are great options as they can revive allies who die. Additionally Enchantress's Divine skill heals everyone for a bit and provides a powerful shield and Renee Ven's only aides Mercenaries, however at Pisces her skill additionally refreshes the most recently used Divine Skill of your other Heroes which can be quite useful. *AOE: Eliminating the enemy mercenaries as fast as possible can be a very helpful as they are the actual damage threats in most situations. Some great options include: **Toxic Shaman, Won Ton, Ironclad Wolvenfiend, Bullhead, Demon Slayer, Sapphirix, Pounder, Great Sage - All of which have both active and divine skills which deal powerful aoe damage **The Berserker and Arctic Lord - have powerful active skills which deal aoe damage. **Carol d'Belle's divine skill unleashes a very tanky Yeti on top of her target from across the map. The skill also stuns all units in the area for a few seconds. *Flying enemies really shine in El Dorado. There are many maps where most of the enemies fly, some maps where all enemies fly, and there really are no reliable ranged tanks in the game. Also lets be honest, you didn't put very much time into upgrading your Air Defensees. And of course the most difficult bosses are all flying dragons which makes things even more complicated. Here are some ideas on what you can do. **Landslide's fortitude skill still goes off even is it is a flying Hero and he seems to pull aggro on some units, although not all. He will walk back and stand on his platform which can make him very tanky even though you cannot use his skill if you give him an Arctic Lord Aide which will heal Landslide for 8% of his HP per second at max level. **Chiron's Fortitude Skill can be very useful at giving the enemies something to hit while you lay down aoe to at least wipe out their mercs. **Carol d'Belle is probably the only real ranged tank as both her Active and Divine Skills summon very tanky creatures. **I didn't include Rath in the aoe section because his Divine Skill only hits Heroes, but it can absolutely wreck enemy Heroes while healing Rath for an incredible amount. **Skull Mage's Divine Skill restores him to full health, makes him invulnerable, and buffs himself significantly for a good bit of time. **Ironclad has the best HP of any Hero in the game by a large margin, and he literally drives a tank, and he has fantastic aoe, so perhaps he has what it takes.